Japanese people’s views on nuclear power are polarized, and its unclear and unpredictable when nuclear power stations will be switched on again in Japan. Read what the Governor of Niigata Prefecture has to say, who hosts the world’s largest nuclear power plant with 7 reactors and 8 GigaWatt capacity.

According to the Japanese Energy Fundamental Law, the Government has to publish an official Energy Basic Plan at regular intervals. You can read the 4th Energy Basic Plan published on April 11, 2014, and listen to a commentary on it for The Economist here on YouTube. The 4th Energy Basic Plan starts with the assumption that Japan is poor in natural energy resources, which of course is only true if we restrict “natural energy resources” to fossil resources. Japan is actually potentially very very rich in renewable energy sources, as the scenario plans developed by Japan’s Industry and Economy Ministry (METI) and Japan’s Environmental Ministry show.

Post-Galapagos and globalization of Japan’s technology groups

Foreign companies in Japan, and Japanese companies overseas face a dilemma: expensive expatriates with limited local know-how, or local management? Japanese companies seem to have finally reached the conclusion that Japanese managers eg sent to Germany are in most cases not the best choice to lead a German-based multinational company – here are some great recent examples:

Carlos Ghosn is very well aware of such multi-cultural management issues and how to solve them, however too many EU companies in Japan are not. If they were, EU investments in Japan could be at least 50% higher – as you can read here.